Trudeau played a bad hand right to the end

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/01/2025 (254 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So, the Justin Trudeau era comes to a close — fittingly as a slow, lingering, three-month close that while necessary to choose a new Liberal leader, feels more funereal than anything else.

Trudeau went to the Governor General to prorogue the current house session until March 24, buying his government time for what he described as “the party select(ing) its next leader in a robust, nationwide competitive process.”

Good luck with that, and good luck to whichever Liberal leader comes next. Trudeau has made it so that they will need every bit of luck possible. Trudeau cited internal party strife as one of the main reasons why he believed he could not move forward to win another election — but truth be told, it was his decision to overstay his welcome that created the strife.

“It has become obvious to me that with the internal battles that I cannot be the one to carry the Liberal standard into the next election.” Trudeau said. That would have been a penetrating insight into the obvious even if Trudeau had recognized it five months ago.

At this point, it plays more like a long-delayed personal awakening. The long-tumbling polling fortunes of the Liberals, along with the failure of any of the party’s latest budgetary and policy moves to get political traction, were ample evidence that his time as prime minister and Liberal standard-bearer was over.

He was pretty much the only person left who didn’t realize that he was the prime ministerial equivalent of a “dead man walking.”

On the policy side, history will probably be kinder to Trudeau than the current electorate is — his legacy, which certainly stands at risk of being undone by Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, will include advancing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, fighting child poverty and advancing school lunch programs nationally, dealing with the first round of trade battles with U.S. President Donald Trump, leading the country (both structurally and financially) through the mayhem of the international COVID pandemic, and making efforts to address climate change. Pharmacare, daycare and a federal dental care program also stand out.

The carbon tax, though a method widely championed by economists for moving populations to more environmentally friendly choices, became a political millstone for Trudeau and the Liberals. Even though any meaningful effort to slow climate change is likely to be even more difficult for, and unpopular with, Canadian voters, the carbon tax has become a hot-button issue, and one the Conservatives have hammered away at relentlessly, without explaining how they would address climate issues.

That doesn’t matter right now. Trudeau’s foot-dragging has cost his party an opportunity, leaving them in a hole that is going to grow deeper through the winter.

And worse: with a clear and obvious threat to the Canadian economy taking office right next door in the United States — the tariff-loving and wildly unpredictable Donald Trump — this is a terrible time to have a lame-duck government muddling through a leadership contest.

Parliament will not be open, ready and able to react to and deal with what happens next, and Trudeau and his cabinet ministers will lack the gravitas and public support to back any actions they might try to take.

Some will argue that, in a global sense, Trudeau will be leaving Canadians in a better place than it was when he took office. But where are we exactly, right now?

He has dealt us a bad hand, and at the same time has insisted on playing it right down to the last possible moment.

As far as timing goes, this particular move by Trudeau has been an abject failure: both too little and too late.

» Winnipeg Free Press